Review of Steven J. Rosenstone, Forecasting Presidential Elections (published by Yale University Press, New Haven, CT, 1983))

Rosenstone develops a causal model to forecast political voting. The model seems reasonable; for example, it includes information about party, key issues, the economy, war, incumbency, region, and trends over time. Standard econometric methods are then used to determine how much weight should be given to each factor. The conditions are then forecasted for each of the 50 states, and the weights are applied to give state-by-state forecasts. Aggregation across states provides forecasts of both the popular and electoral votes for presidential elections.